Adrik:Adrik wanders the town for a while, watching life go by in a human settlement. It's an interesting intellectual exercise, noting the differences between a Dwarven settlement, and this rather integrated town. A Halfling lass and a Dwarven lad chase after a boy (with rather pointy ears for a Human), who is running as fast as his little legs can carry him, cackling all the way. An Elven woman bickers over the price of bread with the human baker, while next door, a young half-orc tries not to stare at the passing young women from behind the butcher's storefront. How quickly the wounds of raids seem to heal.
Eventually, Adrik's Dwarven instincts kick in, and lead him to a tavern. The air smells vaguely of stale beer, the stool rocks uneasily, but the booze is strong and cheap. Before he can order a drink, a small figure climbs up the stool next to him. It's the Lord Underborough, looking much better after a proper meal and a good nights rest. He smiles widely, "Adrik, no? Fancy seeing you here! Let me get you a drink! Ard! Get this man a drink!" The barkeep nods, and pulls out tankard, looking at Adrik expectantly for his order.
While the barkeep fixes Adrik a drink, the Lord Underborough puts a small, ragged book on the bar. "I wanted to thank you for rescuing me from the horrid place, again. Sorry about that dreadful Lord Underborough nonsense." He turns a slight shade of red when he brings it up, but forges on, "Miro Millbridge, Playwright and Skald Extraordinaire! Pleasure to make your acquaintance properly!"
Johanna:Johanna sits down to design a Bracer of Shielding.
(Arcana (Hour 1): 19+6, Success! 2 Successes, 0 Failures!)
Magic item creation is a taxing and arduous process, not to mention expensive. It's the primary reason most are... "hand-me-downs".
(Arcana (Hour 2): 9+6, No Progress! 2 Successes, 0 Failures!)
But to make it from scratch? With nothing more than an idea? It's an upward struggle, and there's no guarantee the final product will deliver.
(Arcana (Hour 3): 6+6, Failure! 2 Successes, 1 Failures!)
Johanna's going a bit faster than is really recommended (it normally would take days, if not weeks to design a magical item, but she doesn't have days), and it's starting to show when she spends an hour working on a dead end. End result: confirmation that while bronze may look nice with the rest of the design, it is far too weak to hold the enchantments. Other results: a raised temper and a wasted spell.
(Arcana (Hour 4): 10+6, No progress! 2 Successes, 1 Failures!)
To avoid wasting more spells today, Johanna runs the mathemagical numbers again on steel, but gets lost in tension strength measurements, as she doesn't have access to the extensive engineering library at Ulcaster.
(Arcana (Hour 5): 4+6, Failure! 2 Successes, 2 Failures!)
After the fruitless steel calculations, Johanna decides to risk it, and burns a spell off into enchanting the steel plate she's using. When she smacks it with her hammer to test if the defensive spell worked, the steel seizes up, crushing itself into a small ball of metal.
With that a resounding failure, she puts away her research materials, and turns back to Identifying the artifacts recovered.
The Heart of the Mountain is a helmet of rough, ugly malcocite–a grey stone with veins of raw iron through it. Forged in the elemental plane of earth and brought here for purposes long forgotten, it protects the wearer, but knows not the limitations of creatures on this plane.
Once attuned to the helmet, it can only be removed upon levelling though it may be left on. While worn, any critical hit struck against the wearer has two effects:
Roll 1d6. On a 1-2, the wearer gains damage reduction versus piercing damage +1; on a 3-4, slashing; on a 5-6, bludgeoning. This may continue endlessly.
Roll 1d4. The base movement of the wearer reduces by that amount; magical enhancements to movement fail automatically.
With each heavy strike, the helmet thickens and grows a bit more–eventually covering the whole of the neck. Chest. Shoulders. In a spreading mass of hardened otherwordly stone. The wearer gets slower and slower while being more greatly protected.
Once removed, it cannot be re-attuned to that same individual and they lose the damage reduction benefits as well as the movement penalties.
To attune the boots one must have the blood of a dragon. Draconic heritage sorcerers automatically have this requirement, as do dragonborn themselves, all others must imbibe a vial of pure dragonblood from a pureblood dragon. This, itself, can be difficult to find on even the most exotic black market.
Once done, though, the boots call upon the deep well of power in the blood of a dragon—the damage type is based on the dragon blood in an appropriate way (DMs are the final arbiter, but red dragon blood is fire, white is cold, etc.). While wearing the boots, at the start of one’s turn, using a bonus action, one may bring into effect a minor Lair action by drawing the natural magical energies of the world around one’s self into sharp focus and giving it definition.
Either, one may bring 1 damage of that type to every 5ft square adjacent to one’s self (all 8 squares usually, unless otherwise different by virtue of size and thus more spaces) with fire and magma exploding in small fits and pockets all around or icy hail and winds whipping about one’s self, etc. Or, one may bring all that damage to bear on one 5ft space one is adjacent to (in most cases 8 damage, flat) by creating an isolated and intense version of that effect: a serious gout of lava and brimstone in one tight place or a thick, oily cloud of poison in a square.
Once one has drawn power from that area (the surrounding 5ft squares) there is none left to draw until the next day. But, so long as one moves around to new and untapped areas, one may do this every turn.
Johanna's tome reads only as a spellbook, but Johanna knows that's not the end of its secrets...
Arwen:The apothecarian whistles between her teeth. "You're looking for
ten Water Breathing potions? Are you going to be raiding a water temple? That's an expensive order. I don't know if I even have the materials for that. We'd be looking at... probably a thousand gold. Ten healing potions are at least another five hundred." She raises an eyebrow, eying up Arwen, and his possible wallet size.
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Topic: D&D 5e: The Tyranny of Dragons. IC Thread: A Much Delayed End. (Read 119910 times)